Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback Signs Fetal Pain-Abortion Ban

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback got the chance to act on his pro-life convictions and sign into law two pro-life bills that would help limit abortions in the state, which recently saw abortions drop 12 percent.

Brownback signed into law bills including one that will ban late abortions based on the scientific evidence showing unborn children can feel pain beginning at 20 weeks of pregnancy.

“I think challenges of Roe are abounding across the country,” Brownback said. “You’re seeing pro-life legislation pass in many jurisdictions across the nation.”

“The dignity of every individual in the state of Kansas, this country, the world has been significant to me for some time,” the governor said. “Whether that’s somebody in Africa, somebody in prison, some that is unborn. To sign major pro-life legislation in a first term, I think is important and significant.”

“These passed by large bipartisan margins in both the House and Senate. There’s not a dispute in the Legislature,” Brownback said.

Peter Brownlie, president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, condemned Governor Brownback and claimed he is “putting the health and safety of Kansas women and families at risk for purposes of political posturing.”

The first bill, which is similar to a first-in-the-nation law the state of Nebraska passed that successfully drove late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart to move most of his abortion business to Maryland, bans abortions at 22 weeks gestation (20 weeks post-conception) due to the scientific evidence that not only do unborn children feel pain, they feel it more acutely because pain “dampeners” do not fully develop until 40 weeks gestation, and later.

Kansans for Life legislative director Kathy Ostrowski says “the human unborn child feels pain more acutely than any other age infant, child or adult because the biological development of pain suppressors does not mature until 40 weeks gestation.”

She said HB 2218 will “help the nationwide pro-life movement establish that, despite Roe v. Wade, the states have a compelling interest not only in protecting the life of the unborn but in protecting our society from further descending into the barbarism of permitting the intentional inflicting of abortion torture on tiny, pain-feeling humans.”

Before the House vote, a committee heard from pro-life pediatricians from Parsons and Topeka with phone-in advice from a Washington state maternal-infant specialist. Abortion supporters opposing HB 2218 testified as well but brought no intellectual firepower to counter the medical experts that had testified definitively for the pro-life side. The House Federal & State Affairs committee asked opponents if they had any scientific or medical information relevant to the bill. They had none, other than mentioning a 2005 discredited article.

Section 3 allows the induction of an abortion upon a woman when gestational age is 22 or more weeks if “in reasonable medical judgment” she has a condition which so complicates her medical condition as to necessitate the abortion to avert her death or to avert serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.

“This language is fully adequate to cover circumstances in which termination of a pregnancy is truly medically necessary,” Ostrowski said. “Other than a true maternal physical medical situation or life-threatening condition, HB 2218 will ban abortions after 22 weeks gestation (20 weeks post-fertilization). This will prevent abortions sought for the emotional or mental health of the mother, or for the severity of a fetal condition.”

Ostrowski concluded: “Kansans are ashamed of the thousands of abortions that were done in Wichita using this “mental health loophole”–not to help save the mother’s life or prevent substantial, irreversible damage to her body.”

The Kansas Catholic Conference also supported the bill: “HB 2218 would prohibit abortions after twenty weeks, measured from conception, on the grounds that unborn children can feel pain at that time. These bills will help ensure that Kansas, once notorious for its anything-goes abortion policy, will be transformed into a national model for Pro-Life legislation.”

Meanwhile, the Abortion Reporting Accuracy and Parental Rights Act reflects that parents should be counseling and protecting their underage pregnant daughters. Under the measure, if minors apply to court to bypass their parents, the judge in the proceeding should use a strong standard of “clear & convincing” evidence; prepare an adequate court record of why the girl is circumventing her parents; be allowed to order counseling for the minor; and be required to inform authorities if abuse is suspected.

The bill also governs the reporting of late abortions with provisions that were vetoed three times by abortion-supporting past governors Kathleen Sebelius and Mark Parkinson, according to Ostrowski.

“During the bill’s hearing on Jan. 27, the House Federal State Affairs committee asked the lobbyist for Kansas’ Planned Parenthood whether predators are able to hide their crimes by escorting minors through abortion clinics,” she said. “The lobbyist claimed staffers have a short period of time alone with the minor, without her adult companion, implying that the minor would be carefully assessed for coercion/abuse.”

“But that answer has no credibility in light of four years of undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood willing to break minimal state laws instituted to protect children from predatory sex,” Ostrowski continued. “Some 16 hidden camera videos from Live Action show Planned Parenthood’s nationwide commitment to selling abortions while skirting parental consent laws, citing unscientific information to manipulate women to have abortions, helping sex traffickers obtain abortions for the underage girls, and offering insurance-paid services through tax payer funded programs even if the underage girls are not U.S. citizens.”